The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Traditional hamburgers and sandwiches have two pieces of bread with fillings in between. Due to the open-sided design, fillings easily drip or fall out, potentially spilling out onto the surrounding environment, including the consumer's hands and clothing. This is especially problematic for juicy or over-sized fillings.
Various embodiments are known in the prior art in which cavities are formed within the bread of a bun. However, the known methods of making the cavities are either not well-described, or are problematic. For example, GB2401301 (Petrou) teaches a bun with a pocket opening at the top. There is, however, no disclosure about how to manufacture the pocket.
GB2302256 (Anders) teaches a bun that is cut in half horizontally, and a pocket is formed in both top and bottom halves by pressing a hard object into the cut surfaces of the two halves. GB2062436 (La Charite) teaches forming a recess in an elongated piece of bread by impaling the bread roll onto a spike. These methods are all considered to be suboptimal because they necessarily sacrifice the soft texture of the bun, since the recess is formed by compression.
Others teach using a mold or a cooking device that defines both an outer shape of the bun, and a recess with an opening on top. See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,563 (Wheaton), U.S. Pat. No. 4,065,581 (Heiderpriem), U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,517 (Caldwell), and WO2004098295 (Andersen). Since these methods confine the dough in the mold as it is cooking, rising of the dough during baking is limited by the volume of the mold, which precludes producing a bun with a naturally-formed dome shape and a preferred texture. Moreover, the number of buns made during each batch is limited to the number of molds, which might not be suitable for large-scale production.
Thus, there is still a need for systems, devices, and methods for producing a pocketed bun without using compression or confining the bread dough to a mold with a fixed volume.
All publications identified herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.